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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



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SALVADOR CAMACHO ROLDAN 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



BY 
SALVADOR CAMACHO ROLDAN 



Translated from 
LA OPINION, BOGOTA, COLOMBIA 

June 7, 1865 



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,^ ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"^ T^HE name with which we head these lines will be one of the 

^ -*■ most famous which this century, fruitful in great men 

(^ and great events, will transmit to the admiration and love 

vj^ of posterity. Of the many great men whom war, diplomacy 

and politics have raised upon the wings of human passions, 
none will, perhaps, enjoy a history, a fame, so pure and imperish- 
able as he who, controlling the turbulent waves of the most 
colossal civil war of modem times, preserved order with liberty, 
and maintained the integrity of a great republic, while the bonds 
of its society were being broken into atoms by the advent of a 
new civilization. 

This will not be because history will present him brandishing 
a flaming sword over heaps of slain enemies, disposing in despotic 
councils of the fate of peoples, or erasing and shaping the lines 
of territories; neither boldly putting his foot on the unchained 
liberal spirit of his age; but because, as in all great revelations 
of truth to man, the divine spirit of a great idea incarnated itself 
in an humble being, and inspired him with the faith, the courage, 
and the perseverance to draw it safely from the agitated ocean 
through breakers, and in spite of hostile winds, to the port of 
safety and of triumph. 

The greatness of Mr. Lincoln consisted not so much in his 
talents, which were more solid than brilliant; nor in his educa- 
tion, which was neglected, as that of every man, who, like him, 
is bom and grows up in the bosom of poverty; neither in the 
sagacity of the politician nor the audacity of the tribune, or of 
the reformer; but in his manly good common sense, in the firm- 
ness of his character, in the instinctive sagacity with which he 
anticipated the genius and tendencies of his people, in his devoted 
patriotism, in his genial honesty, his guileless frankness, the 
serenity of his spirit, in his unequalled capacity to follow without 
ever losing sight of the thread of events, and to adapt his efforts 
to the magnitude and actual stage of the crisis, and to give to 
the cause of an abstract idea all the interest of enthusiasm and 
of passion; but above all, in raising himself from the narrow 



field of a local advocate to the immense field of passions, conflict- 
ing interests and opinions, which was suddenly lighted up before 
him by the devouring conflagration of civil war. 

What strife so gigantic as that in the United States? What 
men and what interests? What passions and what resources? 
The high proud magnates of slavery with their two thousand 
millions' worth of human flesh, the pride of command from the 
cradle, with all the wealth that tobacco, sugar and cotton could 
bring at their orders; a vast territory traversed by mountains 
and furrowed by great rivers, slavery and liberty, panting avarice 
and disinterested self-abnegation contending hand to hand; 
all the extraordinary discoveries of the second quarter of this 
century face to face with the barbarism of the past ages; the last 
legacy of the Old World disputing the way to the march of ideas 
of the New World; the soul of old Europe and the heart of virgin 
America, the past and the future, contending in a duel to the 
death on the grandest field on the face of the earth. 

To raise within a few months, in a nation that had lost all their 
military habits from long uninterrupted peace, an army of seven 
hundred thousand men; to increase a navy from forty to nearly 
a thousand vessels within three years; to obtain from a people 
accustomed to economy and yearly expenses of forty millions of 
dollars, resources to meet an expenditure of two millions and a 
half daily ; to feel the before hidden hate of despots now violently 
hissing in its face; to see ambition and treason spring up in its 
bosom; where before had been only submissive adoration of the 
people, to listen, amidst the general tumult, to the most dis- 
cordant counsels; to face all these necessities, all these troubles, 
annoyances and dangers, and to march on, like Atlas, with the 
world on his shoulders, firm and full of faith to the last, was the 
task intrusted to and heroically performed by Abraham Lincoln 
and his ministers, those Titans, Seward, Chase, Stanton and 
Welles. 

From the beginning, France and England wished to recognize 
the independence of the Confederates, but they had to shrink 
before the boldness of IVIr. Lincoln, who, through Mr, Seward, 
announced that that recognition would be considered a declara- 
tion of war. The Confederate privateers were armed and ready 



to sail from French and English ports, but at the potent voice 
of the American government they were seized and detained. 
It was necessary to effectively blockade a coast of 3,000 miles in 
extent; and the voice of Mr. Welles created and cast upon the 
waters 960 vessels, and covered the whole of that long line. 
It was necessary to spend $750,000,000 per year, and the wand 
of Mr. Chase found those millions, and the resources to pay 
their interest and to extinguish the principal within a few years. 

There were not 50,000 muskets when the war began, nor 4,000 
men in the ranks. The voice of Mr. Cameron first, and of Mr. 
Stanton afterwards, called together and organized more than 
700,000 brave men, and made, in American shops, more than 
2,000,000 of fire-arms, thousands of cannon, mountains of ammu- 
nition, and other elements of war hardly to be calculated. 

There were no generals. The penetrating sagacity of Mr. 
Lincoln drew from obscurity McClellan, Grant, Sherman, 
Sheridan, Thomas and many others. 

General Fremont, the idol of the northern masses, attempted 
to press the President forward on the road of emancipation putting 
on the airs of a dictator, driving out in his magnificent carriage, 
drawn by four white bourses, displaying the train of a prince in 
the heart of the republic. Mr. Lincoln plucked off his plumes 
and stars and removed him from the command of the West. 

General Hunter, with extemporaneous zeal, declared the liberty 
of the slave early in 1 862 . Mr. Lincoln revoked his proclamation 
and took away his command. 

On the victorious field of Antietam, General McClellan under- 
took to impose on the President a policy favorable to slavery. 
Mr. Lincoln broke the sword of the presumptuous chieftain, 
and launched forth the proclamation of emancipation. 

In addition to these we might refer to innumerable other ex- 
amples of elevation and firmness of character indispensable to 
guide a country in the midst of civil war. To his firmness is 
due the absence of chiefs dangerous to order and liberty; that 
freedom to the slave should not have produced a servile war; 
that hatred and vengeance did not engender bloody retaliations, 
dangers so common, unfortunately, in the civil wars of Spanish 
America. No forced loans, brutal recruiting, or disorderly 



seizure of property, so demoralizing to the soldiery; none of those 
savage demonstrations of energy so common here. Nothing 
of this has been seen in the United States, neither have the 
Federal authorities fomented political or moral ideas, or attempted 
to manufacture public opinion to its own ends — evils which 
among us, follow in the track of revolutions as the foetid and 
unhealthy sediment follows the freshets in our rivers. With 
all this, the virtues of the people have, of course, had much to do; 
but not a little has depended on the high character of the leaders 
who have marked out the way and given the example to popular 
impulse. 

It has been thought, mistakenly to our view, that Mr, Lincoln 
was gifted with an invincible stubbornness in his purposes, and 
a blind fanaticism in his ideas. We have noticed, on the contrary, 
in studying the acts of this public man, much moderation and a 
great inclination to conciliation. Although an abolitionist for 
many years before, his inaugural programme of 1861 offered all 
the guarantees to be desired by slavery, asking only that it should 
not be extended into the newly settled territories. 

The emancipation of the slaves was not decreed until the 
measure became not only a wise means of securing their powerful 
assistance in the war, but also an irresistible exigence of popular 
opinion. When, in 1863, propositions of peace were talked of by 
the South, Mr. Lincoln did not hesitate to declare his willingness 
to submit the validity of the Emancipation Proclamation to the 
decision of the Supreme Court, and the approval or disapproval 
of Congress. It was only after so much blood had been shed that 
it cried to heaven for recompense, that he judged the only price 
of this blood was the irrevocable, complete, and absolute extermi- 
nation of slavery, and that ground alone he manifested a disposi- 
tion not to yield. 

The last phase of his public character, and which appeals 
most lively to our sympathy, was his magnanimity. The formid- 
able and groundless insurrection, which had threatened to destroy 
the unity and force of the country, subdued, his first and only 
purpose was to reorganize the conquered territories, returning 
them their existence and their own governments, without retain- 
ing for a moment longer than necessary and just the discretionary 
power with which the rebellion had armed him. He never 



thought from the first of humbHng and punishing, or of showing 
that healthy energy which is always the inevitable source of 
armed reaction. The stupid assassin, more stupid than his 
murderous bullet, without doubt, did not think that, amidst the 
dangerous fermentation of passions which follows a day of vic- 
tory over brethem, the surest guaranty of restoration and liberty 
to the South was the noble life of Mr. Lincoln. 

In the vulgar sense of human language, Abraham Lincoln 
was certainly not a great man. He had not the dazzling prestige 
of victorious achievements in war; he was not a conqueror of 
peoples and countries; he neve'r enveloped his plans in the 
gloomy obscurity of mystery, dissimulation; he never took to 
himself the credit of results which followed the inscrutable 
decrees of Providence; his voice had not the enchanting harmony 
of Demosthenes or Mirabeau, or of Clay; he was free from that 
Satanic pride, which, in others, supplies the want of true greatness. 
But he possessed something greater than all these, which all the 
splendors of earthly glory cannot equal. He was the instrument 
of God. The Divine Spirit, which in another day of regenera- 
tion took the form of an humble artisan of Galilee, had again 
clothed itself in the flesh and bones of a man of lowly birth and 
degree. That man was Abraham Lincoln, the liberator and 
savior of the great republic of modern times. That irresistible 
force, called an idea, seized upon an obscure and almost common 
man, burnt him with its holy fire, purified him in its crucible, 
and raised him to the apex of human greatness — even to being 
redeemer of a whole race of men. He whose boyhood was passed 
at the plough-handle in the then solitary prairies of Illinois; 
whose early manhood was dragged out in fatigue at the oar of a 
Mississippi flat-boat, and the only repose of whose maturer years 
was the noisy labors of the forum; that man was called to be the 
arbiter of the fate of his country — the great man of state, whose 
destiny it was to manage the rudder during the most frightful 
storm of this age. In the critical hour of trial and danger, all 
rested on him. Even the lines of his physiognomy, half grave, 
half comic, had been transformed by the agitations of his life. 
In the language of a distinguished journaHst of his country, 
"his kind and powerful face was slightly marked by the circular 
track of his jocose thoughts, and deeply ploughed and cross- 



furrowed, the visible signs of his profound anxieties." There is 
in his last words something of the fire of the old prophets. 
"Fondly de we hope," (he said in his inaugural address on the 4th 
of March last), "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that 
this mighty scourge of war may pass away. Yet if God wills 
that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash be paid by 
another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years 
ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord are true 
and righteous altogether'." And that nothing should be wanting 
to complete the true grandeur of his life, the hand of crime 
snatched it from him in the midst of the triumph of his cause, 
and bound his temples, already pale from the vigils and anguish 
of four years, with the resplendent crown of the martyr. 

The tragic death of Mr. Lincoln has its only semblance of com- 
parison in history in that of Henry Fourth, cut off in the pleni- 
tude of his genius and of his vast enterprises by the dagger of a 
fanatic. The wretch's pretext of tyrannicide is absurd and 
ridiculous applied to a man who had freed four millions of slaves, 
and prepared the way to freedom for the three millions more in 
the Spanish colonies and Brazil, and inaugurated the era of 
universal emancipation of the races, which, like the fellahs of 
Egypt and pariahs of India, are yet the object of spoliation by 
more powerful races. The regeneration even of Africa itself, 
of that great continent which is the affront of the century, 
will be, perhaps, one of the consequences of the abolition of 
slavery in North America. 

If the emancipation of the negroes could give the right, not to a 
fanatic or inebriate but to a slaveholder, to avenge himself by 
murdering the liberator, what right would not being enslaved 
give the slave against the master? 

If the assassination of Mr. Lincoln could find an excuse with 
the slavery party, with what show of justice could any vengeance 
be lamented which, in the name of a whole race invoking the 
recollections of two centuries of oppression, the negroes should 
now take on their ancient spoilers? What good was to result 
to a cause already fallen in the opinions and consciences of men, 
by the assassination of a single man, who was not the creator but 



9 

simply the instrument of an idea before fixed in the brain of all, 
and master of their wills? Abraham Lincoln is dead, but his 
work is finished and sealed forever with the veneration which 
God has given to the blood of martyrs. He who was yesterday a 
man, is today an apostle; he who was the centre at which the 
shots of malice and hatred were aimed, is now consecrated by 
the sacrament of death; he who was yesterday a power, is today 
a prestige, sacred, irresistible. His voice is louder and more 
potent from the mansion of martyrs than from the capitol, and 
the cry which was boldly raised among the living is mute before 
the majesty of the tomb. 

Abraham passes to the side of Washington — the one the father , 
and the other the savior of a great nation. The traditions, pure 
and stainless, of the early times of the republic, broken at the close 
of the administration of the second Adams, were restored in the 
martyr of Ford's theatre; and the predominance of material 
interests which has heretofore obscured the country of Franklin, 
will abdicate the field to the prelacy of moral ideas, of justice, 
of equality, and of reparation. 

The whip has dropped from the hand of the overseer; the 
blood-hound will hunt no more the fugitive slave in the mangrove 
swamps of the Mississippi; the hammer of the auctioneer of 
negroes has struck for the last time on his platform, and its hateful 
sound has died into eternal silence. The sacred ties of love which 
unite the hearts of slaves will not again be broken by the forced 
separation of husbands and wives, parents and children. The 
unnatural and infamous consort between the words liberty and 
slavery is dissolved for ever, and liberty ! liberty ! will be the cry 
which shall run from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the 
northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. 

This great work has cost a great price. Humanity will have 
to mourn yet for many years to come the horrors of that civil 
war, but above the blood of the victims, above the bones of its 
dead, above the ashes of desolate hearths, will arise the great 
figure of Abraham Lincoln, as the most acceptable sacrifice 
offered by the nineteenth century in expiation of the great crime 
of the sixteenth. Above all the anguish and tears of that immense 
hecatomb will appear the shade of Lincoln as the symbol of hope 
and of pardon. 



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